Mountolive

by Lawrence Durrell

Paperback, 1991

Call number

FIC DUR

Collection

Publication

Penguin (1991), 320 pages

Description

â??Mountolive who had already found the open sesame of language ready to hand, suddenly began to feel himself really penetrating a foreign country...â?? In Mountolive, the third volume in Durrellâ??s Alexandria Quartet, the events surrounding the interwoven community of Nessim, Justine, Narouz, Pursewarden and the other major characters are given a very different perspective. The intrigues and complex relationships are seen through the political prism of a world plunging towards war. David Mountolive, once emotionally involved with Nessimâ??s set, now returns to Egypt as the British a

User reviews

LibraryThing member thorold
Mountolive is the third member of the Alexandria Quartet. The narrator of Justine and Balthazar (previously unnamed but now called Darley) appears as a minor character in this book, but this is a more conventional novel in structure, using a disembodied narrator and taking the British diplomat,
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David Mountolive as the main point-of-view character. It takes us for a third time through the events described in Justine, but shifts the emphasis to a much broader, politically-oriented view, so that the epic love story at the centre of Justine becomes a minor, background incident. Although set in the thirties, this is very clearly a novel written in the aftermath of the Suez fiasco, exploring the dangers inherent in the pro-Arab policy of the British government before the war.

The early chapters set on the feudal estates of the Coptic Hosnani family have an almost Russian flavour to them (possibly deliberate, as Durrell then briefly switches the scene to the British embassy in Moscow); by the end of the book we are back in a sordid Graham-Greeneland of bribery and espionage.

The odd thing about this book, perhaps, is that you could easily read it and get a great deal of pleasure out of it without knowing a thing about the two earlier books. If you are reading them in sequence, you get the additional interest of seeing the actions and motivations of the story revised and undermined yet again, with whatever that tells you about the instability of narrative authority. Possibly because Durrell isn't writing in the persona of Darley any more, there is less self-conscious overwriting, although there are still more quotable phrases per page than one is altogether comfortable with. Sadly, Scobie, the most vivid of the minor characters in the earlier books, is absent, but we still have a few scenes with Pombal, while the novelist Pursewarden really comes into his own here.
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LibraryThing member Cecrow
The conflict between duty and personal relationships. Mountolive does what the second book could not: freed from Darley's narration and shifted to a third person perspective, it casts the first book in a new light rather than merely adding to its layers. It has the power to stand on its own,
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although anyone skipping the first two novels would cost this one its ability to surprise. Even Balthazar, it seems, was often treading in the dark. At first it reads only like the next link in a chain as Mountolive's story builds on our introduction to Nessim's family. Then as Pursewarden, Nessim and Justine receive further illumination, it folds back in on itself.

At the same time as the puzzle box reveals its extra facets, however, in bringing clarity to vagueness it also brings the prosaic to the artful. Darley is largely dismissed behind his back, but for the reader to do the same would be to brush away the slick presentation that Durrell brought to his first novel and (to a lesser degree) the second. This third is more fun and easy to read, but it is also more conventional and lacks the same depth. I regret Durrell had the casual propensity of tossing the "N" word into the mix. It disturbed my easy enjoyment of what's otherwise the best entertainment value of the quartet so far, if not the most skillful.
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
The third book of The Alexandria Quartet is different from the first two-- since Durrell wanted to discuss the subject/object distinction, it becomes an "objective" novel, written in a wide third-person point-of-view, rather than the first-person perspective of the first two. It makes for a very
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different novel from the first two-- while Balthazar wouldn't make sense if you hadn't read Justine (or at least it wouldn't have much of a point), Mountolive could stand entirely on its own. Its perspective is very removed from that of the first two-- its protagonist, David Mountolive, only has a couple fleeting mentions in the second book, whereas the narrator of the first two (finally given a name here) is barely in this one, and usually disparaged when he is mentioned, much to my amusement. The continuous revision of the information we received in the first book is very interesting-- Mountolive presents an entirely new set of reasons for the events of Justine yet again, so that it would seem old Balthazar didn't know what he was talking about after all. Or did he? Even though this book is written in the third person, allegedly more reliable, I never felt inclined to trust it. I think I would prefer it if the version of events given in the first book was true, but I'll wait to talk more about that once I read the last book in the series. Hopefully soon.
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LibraryThing member michaelbartley
at times this novel is great, a true examation of love and desire tje reader is taken to a world and an age that gone, but in the book you see the start of our time and the end ot the older time got weaker as the novel went on
LibraryThing member mbmackay
The third book of the Alexandria quartet.
Experimental fiction that was reportedly a commercial and critical success when first published, it has not aged well. Some of the stylistic quirks, such as heavily quoting the words of a fictional author in the story, just seem odd, while others are just
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self indulgent, such as the repeated returns to quote Scobie the gay former seaman and now police officer. Still the series is impressive in the capacity to represent the same events from the perspective of different story tellers at different times, and the while thing, in my view, is not great, but a good near miss. Read June - July 2010.
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LibraryThing member Rocky_Wing
for me, this book doesn't quite match up with it's predecessors. it lacked some of the poetic writing from justine and balthazar. even some of the beautiful and horrific scenes were lacking. i think this is because the perspective is no longer through darley. interpreting the events through this
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character is what made things come alive. i am glad that durrell decided to travel back to this formula for the final installment. but it forces me to wonder, why didn't durrell keep it that way for the whole series? what was the advantage for this novel? it just made it more scientific, exact, direct, lacking the emotion.

there are still some amazing sections of this book and the layer that is added is deep. i can't wait to finish the final piece.
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LibraryThing member kant1066
In this, the third volume of Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet,” the narrative shift focuses, this time to Mountolive, a character who has perhaps more in common with the real-life Durrell than even Darley, who narrated both volume I (“Justine”) and will narrate volume IV (“Clea”).
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Both Durrell and Mountolive were born in India and later joined the Foreign Service abroad.

In this “sibling companion” to the other volumes, we find both more growing political intrigue and romantic machination. Just as “Balthazar” reconstituted and reframed the story of “Justine,” the entry of Mountolive as a major figure does much the same. He begins at the Hosnani estate of where Nessim, Narouz, their mother Leila, and ailing father all reside, and we quickly learn of Mountolive and Leila’s love affair. The jumps in time make it somewhat difficult to discern when this occurred (most likely well before the action of volumes I and II), but their relationship is handled every bit as well as the myriad other relationships, romantic and Plutonic, that have arisen. Mountolive takes a job as a British foreign service and hires Pursewarden, a more minor character from the previous two volumes, as one of his advisers. We also learn of a gun cartel that seems to be affiliated in some way with Narouz, whose political influence and rhetoric is becoming too strong for his own good. Mountolive’s knowledge of the gunrunning plot, along with the corruption the Pasha both accepts and participates in, let him leave Egypt, but not before becoming thoroughly disillusioned.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who read my reviews of the first two novels that I have utterly enjoyed “Mountolive,” too. And since I know longer know how to gush about Durrell’s gorgeous, fantastic writing in an original way, I will do what I did in those reviews and leave you with a snippet from the opening chapter detailing Mountolive’s entry into the British Foreign Service and his involvement with Egypt:

“As a junior of exceptional promise, he had been sent to Egypt for a year in order to improve his Arabic and found himself attached to the High Commission as a sort of scribe to await his first diplomatic posting; but he was already conducting himself as a young secretary of legation, fully aware of the responsibilities of future office. Only somehow today it was rather more difficult than usual to be reserved, so exciting has the fish-drive become.”

How can you not love this stuff?
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LibraryThing member JBreedlove
Starts slow and ends strangely but mostly a good and different read. Durrell's prose is a window into an earlier time of writing. Languid and descriptive w many older English words that I had to look up. Scry? The story is also a light on the perils of occupation and the difficulty in mixing
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western & eastern cultures.

The third book in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Robert Kaplan noted this book in one of his travelogue's.
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LibraryThing member GarySeverance
Mountolive is the third novel in the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. In the first novel, Justine(1957) the narrator Darley, an Irish expatriate living and teaching in Alexandria, sets the stage for the innovative four volume work by describing his fascination with the ancient Egyptian city
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and his immersion into the complex social life of the Alexandrians. As a writer, he attempts to capture the essence of the city by chronicling over time the intricate and mysterious interactions of several characters living in the Mediterranean coastal city in pre-World War II Egypt. Justine is the flawed, sensual heart of her social group, married to and in love with Nessim, the eldest son of a wealthy Coptic Christian family who live on a vast ranch at the edge of the desert. As a Jew, she is forever excluded from true acceptance by Nessim's family and the culture of Alexandria. She is impulsively driven to find self -acceptance and identification with the essence of the life of the city. She searches desperately but unsuccessful to find meaning in life in Alexandria, that she conceptualizes as a small precise key to a beautiful and intricate pocket watch. The urgency is to find the key before age reduces her passion and youthful allure.

The second novel, Balthazar(1958) involves Darley's review of an interlinear (a book written in more than one language) sent to him by Balthazar a psychiatrist acquaintance who presents a more detailed view from multiple cultural sources of the social and political situation in Alexandria described in Justine. Important information not earlier available is supplied and the historical accuracy of events is supplemented by Balthazar's complex written psychoanalytic interpretation of Justine, Nessim, and other key players. The personalities of the characters are shown to be less fixed and more determined by interpersonal agendas and apparently random events in Alexandria than Darley presented in volume one of the quartet. Even with the structured focus on unconscious motivations of the characters and their defensive interactions, the essence of life in Alexandria seems chaotic and random.

In the third novel, Mountolive (1959), Darley describes the career and psychological development of a British diplomat trained for a lifetime to maintain "good form" at all times. Part of his training as a young man involved early placement by the British High Commission in Alexandria as a sort of scribe to await his first diplomatic posting. At that time he had a letter of introduction to the Hosnani family, the Coptic Christian family owners of the ranch Darley introduced in the first novel, Justine. The reticent Mountolive came of age rapidly in his brief early experience placement and learned the value of maintaining a careful, conservative, British approach to people and diplomatic decision-making, his "stiff upper lip." With knowledge gained from this experience, Mountolive left Alexandria for many years occupying additional upwardly mobile posts in the British Empire between the World Wars. In the third novel of the Quartet, after years of training in diplomacy and obedience, he returns to Alexandria as British Ambassador to Egypt during the same time period described in Justine and Balthazar. He anticipates that finally he can make decisions on his own and exert a British structural influence on Egyption culture, politics, and the lives of characters he met during his first visit to Alexandria.

Before long, Mountolive discovers that his concentration on maintaining good form in Egypt is only as attractive as his uniform and his ambassadorial presence in society has only minor effects on social and political situations. As World War II approaches, Coptic Christians become targets of Moslem discrimination, Justine finds her risky existential key, Nissim and Balthazar organize military support for a pro-Palestinian movement, a British staff member commits suicide, the Egyptian king dies, pro-Hitler sentiment increases, and Mountolive realizes he has important responsibilities without any power to influence events. The main characters develop a common belief that somewhere in the heart of experience there is order and coherence which we might surprise them if they are attentive enough, or patient enough. But they all ask themselves, will there be time? Will Mountolive seek a path of least resistance or will he persist in his largely ceremonial ambassador role? What will happen to the Hosnani family members and other social/political ties established by Mountolive. The novel shows the restrictions on individual free will even in an exotic city like Alexandria during a turbulent historical era and sets the stage for the concluding part of the Alexandria Quartet, Clea. I highly recommend Durrell's major literary accomplishment that influenced the direction of post-World War II literature. Looking at the same events from different perspectives (Justine-existential, Balthazar-psychoanalytic, Mountoloive-social/structural) Darley constructs a narrative that establishes in the reader a tolerance for ambiguity and an acceptance of the existential power of a fully conscious life.
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LibraryThing member dbsovereign
See the review for Justine.
LibraryThing member jonfaith
The sound of water trickling and of sponges crushing softly upon the body of his brother, seemed part of an entirely new fabric of thought and emotion.

Sorry for any undue disclosures, but I'm attempting to keep my stride, however flailing and gurgling, towards the conclusion. A reddened, sweaty
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review of the Quartet is to follow.
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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
I enjoyed this chapter of the Alexandria quartet, and can see how the layering of the narrative was successful in carrying the spirit of the overall work. Here we get a political angle to the motivations, and a showing of the steel teeth that lay not so far beneath the surface of pre-war
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Alexandria, and by extension, through the British Empire as a whole. It wasn't any work to press on to the next volume.
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LibraryThing member Castlelass
I am slowly making my way through Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, four books originally published 1957-1960. I still have to read Clea, but so far, Mountolive is my favorite. It is a more straightforward and linear narrative than the first two books, Justine and Balthazar.

David Mountolive
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is a British diplomat who gets promoted and moves back to Alexandria. The storyline covers his initial life in Egypt, and his relationship with the Hosnani family, particularly Leila and her grown sons, Nessim, and Narouz. It covers Mountolive’s rise in the administrative ranks and sheds light on the nefarious events that have earlier occurred, such that the reader understands why one of the characters was murdered.

After the first two installments, I have gotten used to Durrell’s elaborate writing style, and after initially not liking it all that much, I am now enjoying it. I think it helped that this third book in the series is written in third person. I do not think any of these books stands alone very well, so if you are planning to read this classic set, start with Justine.
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LibraryThing member Gypsy_Boy
Volume III of “The Alexandria Quartet.” As I said in my review of the previous volume, “Durrell is preoccupied with what it means to love someone, how people change over time and, finally, how “truth” depends upon one’s perspective—which, of course, changes over time but and depends
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on one’s “position” as well.” This volume, written from the perspective of the Mountolive, a British diplomat, is chronologically and narratively (?) straightforward, which is a distinct change of pace from the first two volumes. As did the previous volume, it fills in gaps, answers questions, and creates new ones. All from a new perspective which, of course, has its own view of people and events. The volume aptly illustrates Durrell's point about the enormous power of one's vantage point and one's knowledge on one's actions I thought the writing in volume I (Justine) was almost uniformly excellent; in volume II (Balthazar) “occasionally as brilliant as in Justine, but less often so.” The writing here is more quotidian, undoubtedly on purpose—to a point. The question is to what point. I liked the book, just not as much as the previous two volumes. But, again, the work as a whole only seems more remarkable all the time.
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LibraryThing member therebelprince
As we gradually realise the scope of Durrell's literary experiment, in this, the third of the Alexandria novels, it becomes clear how no one human can ever truly know any other human, and it's heartbreaking. Durrell's prose is often too rich, veering into a purple so rich Caesar wouldn't wear it,
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but for every shot that misses, three hit their mark. Mountolive's drive through the storm is rivaled for beauty only by the dust-storm sequence in "Justine", and the final chapter is a slow, pulsing, vivid depiction of the last moments before death. I'll probably give myself a few weeks to cleanse the palate before reading the final volume in the series, but I'm a Durrell convert for life, I can tell.
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Pages

320

ISBN

0140153209 / 9780140153200
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